Mt Kailas

Upon Return

My journal from Tibet is gone

Left on an airplane

and once again the message

that Darjeeling tried to teach me

comes back:

Take nothing,

Try to capture nothing,

Be present in this moment

That will

be your journal

That will

be what

you write on the ethers

with your life.

Be a pen, write with the juice of the soul

as ink onto the hearts and minds

of those around you

And on the consciousness of trees

And the white heads of mountains.

Give without the staccato grasping of censoring

of writer or reader.

Let go Bruce – let go of Bruce.

Be a blank page too

Let the sky write on you

with its unrepeatable blue life

Let the hope in the eyes of those children

etch itself on yours,

Allow the prayers of those monks

like warm needles to tattoo

the sound of impermanence on your heart.

Stop telling stories and let the one great story

write with your life.

Drop the tattered clothes,

the old worn out concepts and feelings

that you fold so tight

to keep out the death wind.

Let the fire clothe you and the living word

make of your life

something good for the world to eat.

The trip kept feeding me

the same message:

Go slow; go deep.

Stop the proliferation, the acquisition.

Just get one thing

One simple thing

Like taking this next sip of water

This sip is the most important sip of your life

But it is not special

Once you have taken it you must let it go

The next sip is now the most important thing

you have to do.

Don’t run

Everything you need is right here

Including the great fear

of annihilation that the soul feels

in its own way as deeply as the body.

That mountain

Kailas

is not lost.

It teaches me to hold

that great fear in one chamber of the heart

Such bravery in each moment

To embrace death and uncertainty

And still breathe

And still find love

moving through and still

noticing the beauty

of the morning and still

letting the waves of blessing be

and flow without reason,

without meaning.

Uncreatable, inextinguishable

Nothing more or less than the one deep life

breathing and

Self

remembering.